Color Icon: San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum

This weeks post from Colour Studio features one of our favorite San Francisco icons.  In this aerial view, we can see  buildings of varying architectural styles nestled on a block.   One building in particular stands out as a color icon: the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum!

The museum, whose tag line is "connecting art, people and ideas," explores the history, art, and spirituality of the Jewish community today. The building is tucked among the footprints of giant skyscrapers, malls, hotels and historic St. Patrick's Catholic Church.  The museum designed by Daniel Libeskind  melds the historical 1907 brick building, originally the Jessie street power substation, with a dark blue stainless steel addition completed in 2008. This visual juxtaposition of new and old, steel and brick, earth tone and metallic finish might have been jarring but this building feels whole when taken in context with its contemporary glass and steel surroundings. 

The shape of the extension, using the architects characteristic angular shapes is clad in metal tiles.    The form was inspired by the Hebrew letters “chet” and “yud,” both used to spell “L’Chaim,” meaning “To Life”.   The prominent solid color of the extension is as important as the shapes themselves. The opalescent blue colors  selected  are often associated with depth and stability, wide night skies, still ocean waters. 

The color, which has been shown to slow our metabolisms, heart rates, and produce an over all calming effect, seems glacial, like a solid block of cooled tempers emanating tranquil cold into the hyperactive city life surrounding it.   And this is part of what makes this museum a color icon. This building is a clear example that color should never be thought of as mere decoration, chosen purely by personal preference. 

Color, if carefully and thoughtfully chosen, broadcasts meaning to those in the vicinity of the building. A combination of the extension association with a call "To Life!" and the deep blue color can easily be seen as a political or social statement, a call for compromise, levelheadedness, or forethought. In a heated world, the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum asks its visitors to take a deep breath, and not let things get out of hand. Color has the power to change us, our bodies and our minds, and here is a community using color for peace. 

All images via Studio Daniel Libeskind

Color inspiration: Jack Laurilla

Part of .doc series (2013)

After last weeks exploration of color with icon Dale Chihuly, this week we want to introduce you to an up and coming individual using color to explore the language of visual media online: Jack Laurilla. Laurilla is an artist on Tumblr working with images found online.   He remakes them into pure color portraits or creates woven blanket or rug like color-scapes with incongruous software like Microsoft Word.

Word, a common place software, is meant for word processing. If you use a computer in everyday life,  you likely know how to use Word or a similar program to whip out a document full of words. We use processing programs for everything from invoices and business contracts to novels and daily diaries.

Part of .doc series (2013)

Laurilla on the other hand uses that same program to construct documents of color. Using a simple combination of text and highlight color in Word he paints intricate repeating patterns that ask the reader/viewer to see both the whole field of color, the story with all its characters and plot lines, as well as the minute pieces, individual letters and punctuation marks. The images challenge our linguistic separation between document, the visual storage of words, and image, the visual storage of shape and color. Why not read color left to right line by line the way we might read a book or email? 

Part of .doc series (2013)

As he states on his site,  in his work "representation and realism is abandoned in favour of the newly created vocabulary of colour." But what does "vocabulary of colour" mean? Lets look at this red and blue piece from Laurilla's .doc series. One way to think about a new color vocabulary would be to look at this document as though asked what if "vocal" and "eight" (just as two examples of five letter words with no repeating characters) were spelled with five shades of red and five shades of blue instead of letters at all. If we read in color this page could read:

vocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleight

eightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocal

vocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleight

eightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocaleightvocal

How differently we would see our world if our languages were made up of colors instead of characters! 

Color Icon: Dale Chihuly

If ever there was an artist known for working with color it's Dale Chihuly. His wild, extravagant sculptures push the limits of glass, that material we think of as fragile but utilitarian, until it seems weightless and plastic. Born in 1941 Chihuly is an American glass sculptor who has spent years exploring, teaching, and expanding the field of glass sculpture. He studied art, sculpture and interior design before, in 1968, heading off to Venice to study glass as a Fulbright fellow.

He continued to  blow glass himself even after a car accident left him blind in one eye.  He was injured by  his pet material when he flew through the  car windshield.   Years later a shoulder injury left him unable to manage the equipment and he had to hire assistants. This stepping back, getting a view of the big picture turned out favorably for the artist as the complexity and grandeur of his pieces grew.

Chihuly's style developed a maximalist revelry in both shape and color. His  fantastical and organic pieces like plants lured from a Doctor Seuss book were allowed to grow huge and bulbous. And with this scale came a change from  individual blown pieces to the creation of a community of glass pieces. This sense of collective shape, of cumulative color, of superorganism, all expand glass from the one off individuals of utilitarian or even craft focused glass into the wider art conversation.

Chihuly shows us that individual, distinct colors or shapes, can be dropped in favor of environments of objects and gradients of colors. We experience color and shape not as separate from their location but as locations themselves. His work shows us that when we think about color it can be in three dimensional surround sound.   Sometimes abandon leads to our greatest creative breakthroughs.

Making Colorful History: 50 Years after the March On Washinton

A recent post on the NPR Picture Show caught our color loving eyes this week. The article was focused on the colorization of old photographs, specifically of the March on Washington held this time 50 years ago. Each image is an original period photograph taken of the march and surrounding events then painstakingly colored in Photoshop by individuals online. 

The recolored and black and white photographs are beautiful next to one another. The recolorizations bring to life what would otherwise feel like a black and white moment from our deep past.  and while Fifty years marks a long time in the technological advancements that have led to the ubiquity of color photography, for social change fifty years is only a beginning.  

Then this comparison caught our eye. 

Colorized by Sanna Dullaway (left) and Deborah Humphries (right).

The article gives something of a passing thought to the idea that different artists approach the colorizing in different ways. Here Sanna Dullaway's image, on the left, and Deborah Humpries image, on the right show clearly not just the two women's different choices in color of clothing, nail polish, and skin tones, but how the color choices influence the tone of the entire image. And as we here at Colour Studio continue to profess: color has meaning all its own.

Now, there is no way to pronounce one approach more valid than the other but we should recognize that the warm hazy glow of the left produces in the viewer different emotional reactions and interactions than the cool crisp high contrast of the right image. On the left the day feels hot, the air heavy with humidity, like a southern afternoon. The water is green, more natural, more lake like than man made reflecting pool. On the right the blue water and higher contrasts ring of drama, the energy of cities, and maybe even edgy impatience. 

The color choices of the artist interact with and change the way we see the images and in this case the way we see our actual history. But which portrayal of this groundbreaking moment is more authentic?  At ease or on edge?   Maybe the images together side by side, two visions, two experiences of the same moment are the best we can ever come to experiencing and understanding the March on Washington for ourselves. In this media centric age it is important to think about what we are seeing and these two stereoscopic view points show us our history and how color changes the way we view that history all at once. 

The Purpose of Color: The Batel Centre of Cartagena

The Batel is the auditorium and convention centre of Cartagena, a small city of around 200,000 people on the Mediterranean coast in the Murcia region of Spain. Designed by architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano, the centre is a fantastic example of textural color outside and functional color inside.

The city of Cartagena is rich with the traditions of sea based trade, a port town dating back  to around 200 BC. The architects used our spherical coordinate system of longitude to inspire the look and layout of the center and focused on color to bring out the linear threads of the building. Not shy about its industrial neighbors you can see the shipping cranes peeking out from behind the buildings brightly striped exterior.

Much of the exterior is covered with striped and slatted multicolor siding along with two undulating translucent facades made from ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, a type of plastic of great resistance to heat, corrosion and UV) which instead of being painted after the fact is dyed during extrusion with neon pigment. But the real eye for color continues to entice once you venture inside.

The Batel is interesting not just for its cultural sensitivity to its surroundings, liner inspiration, or colorful exterior, but because the interiors use color in very specific and well thought out ways. The architects took into account the myriad of ways, and kinds of events, these types of convention centers produce  and designed various halls to accommodate the desired mood or atmosphere for different types of events. Having a relaxing but interesting talk on the application of quantum computers? Try Hall A, one of the complexes auditoriums, nestled just blow sea level and paneled in deep blue polycarbonate to keep the space, used for everything from heated discussions, lectures to music performances and poetry slams, feeling relaxing and harmonious. But perhaps after the lecture you need to get your scientists moving, inter mingling, sharing ideas?  Then move over to Hall B, designed with airy ceilings and warm colors  which suggest a stimulating  experience in an inviting atmosphere.  The Batel uses color not only to delineate different spaces but to activate a similar mind set in a diverse and disparate crowd of people.

All images via Javier1949

How Paul Rand and IBM fathered Apple and the Beautiful Computer

This week at Colour Studio we wanted to introduce you to Paul Rand, an American graphic designer who brought computers and the companies that make them out of the bland realm of corporate design and began the slow process of personalization and brand loyalty we see today with companies like Apple.

He worked with a slew of well known clients including ABC, Ford, Yale University, UPS and IDEO.   The one relationship that came to define his career was his long time work for IBM. Paul Rand not only changed how we see  multinational corporations but  also demonstrated  how a designer can  effect the entire public personality of a client and even an industry.

He convinced IBM that design and the way the audience interacts with your product is just as important as the quality and usefulness of the product itself. This seems like common sense to many designers and companies today but there was a time when the visual stamp of a company was valued little when compared with its grander reputation. With the launch of his first IBM logo in 1956 Rand created not just a 'identity' for potential customers  to relate to, but launched a design ethos that echos to this day.

IBM logo, 1956

IBM logo, 13 bar variation

To modern eyes these original logos may feel  simplistic or dated but  they were designed when bold brand definition was in its infancy. The striped logo  has come to be synonymous with IBM and uses the simplicity of blue and white to convey the companies relationship to information.  Pixelated individual parts were constructed to form a visual whole. Rand set the viewers  emotional response to the logo by introducing that clear effortless blue, a color long associated with dependability and credible practices. 

The logo then began to insinuate itself into the package design, pamphlets, posters, and even annual reports. It helped ground the companies design footprint while still allowing Rand the opportunity to change the colors,  spacing or striping based on the logos context. It was precisely because of its simplicity that the logo was so versatile for use in any design setting.   Clear enough to carry the weight of the brand even when the color spacing and orientation of the letters changed. This image shows a set of package design from back when people actually bought things like typewriter ribbon. The design builds on the companies standard logo but also creates an eye catching and visually new interpretation of the logo itself. 

But by now you might be asking what does any of this have to do with Apple.  Rand and his IBM logo were the historical context which  inspired Apple in development of their brand.   Apple took Rand's design principles and used them not only in their own logo design but also in the design of their physical products.  The apple missing a bite  become  an idea as well as a design.   This was Rand's lasting legacy. It's the idea that matters. The apple can change size or shape, the IBM letters can move around or change or color but the residue of the identity remain.

 

 


Even with  brand identity soaked into what is essentially merely a shape, its no coincidence that IBM and Apple's logos most commonly appear in blue and grey, strong and dependable. Those  colors are  associated with reliability in business,   and you can observe those two popular colors in the business suits roaming the halls of offices everywhere. The history of design is littered with  examples of the long lasting effects of Paul Rand's influence. His ideas changed the world. 

Humanæ: The Skin Color Index

Humanæ is an ongoing photography project, a "chromatic inventory" to be specific, attempting to use an external color system, namely PANTONE®, to index the spectrum of human skin colors. The project, created by Angelica Dass of Rio de Janeiro, uses color as a "bridge between masks and identities."

In an attempt to subvert our typical skin color classifications Dass reached for the external framework of PANTONE® Guides, one of the major classification systems for color in the world. The system differentiates colors not with nice sounding names but by a consistent alphanumeric code which allows them to be reproduced reliablly in both the material world as well as in digital formats. The system has become such a standard-bearer for the industry it is often called real color. 

Much like a natural history museum strives to maintain a thorough collection of life on Earth, a frankly impossible task if you think about it, Humanæ's goal is a complete index of all possible human skin tones. By indexing the faces of humanity, not with our complex system of moral codes, national borders, and historically unjust racial divides, the project attempts to reveal the spectrum instead of the classification of skin colors.

The color chosen for each volunteer is taken from an 11 x 11 pixel segment of their face and a background is dyed that exact color. But the photographs do more to illicit the color association than simply matching the face and the background color. The series eliminates the external contexts of height, build, and fashion choice. 

The project ignores race classifications such as Asian, Caucasian, American Indian, African American or Other labels which wars have been fought over, and replaces them with the impersonal 71-4 C or 7522 C. Strife and disconnection long associated with skin color is being neutralized by the use of present technology to forge ahead on equal footing, creating an future free from racial divides and privileges. The series challenges the viewer to create an identity independent from "nationality, origin, economic status, age or aesthetic standards." Who knew color could be so integral to how we know our selves and how we know others.